BUG: FreeBSD version 5.0.14 (at least) Bad config file entries

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ryan at bulldogsoftware.com>
To: "John Esak" <john at valar.com>
Cc: "Fplist (E-mail)" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>; <support at fptech.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: BUG: FreeBSD version 5.0.14 (at least) Bad config file entries


> On Sat, Apr 30, 2005 at 11:04:10PM -0400, John Esak said:
>
>> The config file entries have some spurious environment variables, and 
>> some
>> full pathnames to various diretories.  Also, there is an entry for
>> PFTERM=bsd. I have no idea why config file looks so strange, but it seems 
>> to
>> be someone's personal testing type file rather than what should be there, 
>> a
>> good default config.
>
> Hi John,
>
> It has been a couple of years since I worked on that but I'll try my
> best in explaining it.
>
> FreeBSD has a default term type of cons25 which is not fully
> compatible with filePro and it does not provide anything which is more
> compatible via the standard termcap file. There are various quirks
> which led me to write a new termcap entry for filePro on
> FreeBSD. I named it 'bsd'.
>
> And due to the nature of the install program there were several points
> where the default termcap would cause the install to fail. The only
> solution was to force the use of my custom termcap definition.
>
> In short, my bsd termcap is the only thing that will allow filePro to
> run as expected on FreeBSD. If there are any alternatives I'd would
> like to know about them.

cons25 is just about a exactly the same as sco ansi.
the few times I used fp from the freebsd console, I just added added a 
one-line entry for cons25 that set brky to ctrl-c followed by tc=cansi

John is almost certainly not running actually on the freebsd console though 
(remotely hosted box in some rackspace.com type place, verio?) so it really 
shouldn't matter to him at all. His terminal emulator is not setting TERM 
properly or else his telnet/ssh daemon is ignoring it, or else something in 
profile is overwriting it. Possibly he just isn't telling the terminal to 
emulate the right thing, or not telling the freebsd box what his terminal is 
emulating. He should be using the xterm or cansi entries most likely, 
depending on how he's connecting.
a) directly from windows to freebsd box using anzio or some other 
non-facetwin client: probably xterm would be the easiest.
b) facetwin with scoansi emulation to sco box to ssh/telnet to freebsd: 
cansi then definitely.

cosn25 entry would only be necessary when sitting at the console.

probably the best thing would be to use scoansi emulation in the client, set 
TERM=cons25, set PFTERM=cansi, and put    stty intr "^?"    in /etc/profile

the break key is defaulting to ctrl-c is pretty much the only difference we 
care about between scoansi and cons25

By setting TERM to cons25, you get a TERM that points to an existing entry 
in /etc/termcap AND terminfo that will work with a scoansi emulator, and you 
didn't have to go editing the system termcap & terminfo and have the edits 
lost during updates etc... That satisfies all non-fp programs.

By setting PFTERM to cansi you again get a termcap entry for fp that works 
and already exists.

The only discrepency between a scoansi emulator, when logged in to a freebsd 
box, and the already existing termcap entries is that the fp cansi termcap 
includes labels that assume the break key is "Del", but it's ctrl-c on 
freebsd by default. The stty command will change the break key so that the 
labels in the fp termcap are no longer wrong and won't break anything else 
on the system. Other programs won't care what the break key is.

It also might not hurt to put in some more stty commands to disable some 
shell features that sco's shell doesn't have and who's control characters 
are used by fp. Example: job-control hot-keys that are used in define screen 
and define output. Press ctrl-z in define screens and instead of going into 
inverse video mode, you suspend dscreen & toss it into the background and 
get a new command prompt.
so    stty susp ""   in /etc/profile  or at least in users .profiles would 
"turn off" the suspend hot-key ctrl-z and then it would be OK to press it in 
fp.

The person who has the mysterious locking up anzio session might look into 
that too.


Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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